6

A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN

LITERATURE

in most editions. It has now been proved that the Manuscript of Gruneberg is a falsification dating from the present century, and its genuineness is now no longer maintained by any scholars, though a natural patriotic feeling has rendered it painful to many to admit that this manuscript, which was attributed to the ninth century, and described as "the most ancient document in Bohemian, and indeed in all Slavonic literature," is

is

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nothing but a fraudulent imposture. It is proverbially easy to be wise post eventum, that recognised, forgery in this case, after the fact of difficult to repress very natural surprise that the but mysterious manner in which the Manuscript of Griineberg first became known did not create greater suspicion than was actually the case. The manuscript was (in 1818) sent anonymously by post to Francis Count Kolovrat-Liebsteinsky, then high burgrave (or governor) That nobleman had shortly before pubof Bohemia. lished an appeal to the Bohemians in favour of the National or Bohemian Museum, of which he was one of the founders, and which had as principal object the was preservation of the relics of Bohemian antiquity. not until many years later that John Kovdr, steward on Count CoUoredo's estate of Griineberg, declared that he had found the manuscript in an outlying room of the castle of Gruneberg he further stated that he had believed his master. Count CoUoredo, to have been so thoroughly German in his feelings that he would have destroyed the manuscript had been shown to him. difficult for others than Bohemians to realise the absurdity of such statement. The strictly absolutist government of Austria during the first half of the present century inexorably suppressed all pubHc demonstrations